Enjoying Your Blended Family

It's so easy to focus on the problems. Where our focus goes though, our energy flows. If we are always focusing on the problems, we will see more problems. The power comes when we focus on the solutions or ways to overcome the problems. In this episode, we share how important it is to set small goals for your family that are focusing on the solutions of having stronger relationships in your blende...

Happy New Year!!! Do something new this year. Something you've never done. This can add so much excitement to your life. Have you ever tried scuba diving? Even if you don't think it's your thing, it makes a really fun date night idea with your spouse or your kids. Dive shops are everywhere and in just about every town. Most of them offer a "Try Scuba" class. They put you in all the scuba gear and...

"If I could turn back time!" (a little Cher moment, lol) Unfortunately we can't, and probably wouldn't be good if we could. What we can do is try to stay more connected with our family in this new year, and we can do that through planning. As a blended family, we can have a lot of people we need to keep in the "know". If we don't, it leaves room for miscommunication, which in return can cause frus...

Merry Christmas!!! So it's Christmas Eve, and there arose such a clatter. Ok, so it's just the kids running around as you're chasing them, trying to get them to bed. Blended families can all look different on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we can have all of our kids with us, sometimes we have some of our kids with us, or maybe just our spouse is there, and sometimes we might just be looking in the mirr...

What does a blindfold and food have in common? That's right, a blind tasting challenge. We share one of our Adventure Challenge dates that we had. This is an idea you could use with your spouse or your whole family. This was a couples date that we did in the afternoon, and went holiday-themed style. See what happens when one of us decides to go all baby food as a surprise. In this episode, we shar...

All the BioDads please stand-up! OK, it's not bionic dads, but it is biological dads. Hear from a BioDad in a blended family, when he is interviewed by his wife and doesn't know what she is going to ask him. See his raw and honest answers leading up to him entering into a blended family and how he sees life and relationships through it. He even shares when his daughter approached him right before...

Dating your spouse and kids is part of the ingredients to have stronger and healthier relationships in your blended family. However, spending quality time with our family can be some of the first things to go when life gets busy. In this episode, we give ways to help keep this from not falling to the side, so we can grow our blended family closer together instead of pulling apart. We talk about th...

Being a biological daughter in a blended family with a stepdad, stepsister, and brother can be challenging. Hear from our young adult daughter who faced these challenges growing up in this blended family dynamic, as Scarlett (her biological mother) asks her some tough questions that cause her to look back. This episode gives you a look from the inside of a biological kid's perspective as she looks...

Is looking at Christmas lights a tradition for your family every year? If it's not then it could be a really fun way to hang-out with your family. If it is your thing already, we also share some cool ways you can add to the fun and make it an adventure. A few ways we share in this episode: 1. Solo adventures with certain family members 2. As a family outing 3. Scavenger hunt style 4. Special Light...

'Tis the season to be merry. But what happens when your kids are with their other parents and not with you during the holidays? Maybe you have them only for part of the time and wished you had more time with them. This can have a way of sucking the merry right out of the holidays and give you a "Blue Christmas" as Elvis would sing. This can be challenging in a blended family, but there are ways to...

We are talking about intimacy and the "s" word in this episode. It's so important as a married couple to make sure you make this a priority in your marriage. When you do, you stay better connected with each other. When you're better connected, you are better parents for your kids. And besides, it's just a fun thing married couples get to do. Why not have as much healthy fun with it as you can? Som...

Mo Money, Mo Problems! (ok, sorry for the Biggie reference) Money can be another factor that can suck the joy out of the holidays. The holidays can have a way of turning our lives into a money pit. This is the second part in our Enjoying the Holidays episodes. Instead of turning the whole next year into a financial recovery period, there are other ways to keep the joy of the holidays without money...

OK, it's time to do those finger stretches! So many people, especially many of our kids, love video games. This can be a great way to connect with them and have fun spending time together, even if it's not your thing. When we can find things that our kids like, and do that with them, it lights up their world. Video games can be just that. We share so many fun ideas that you can use to incorporate...

We are entering into the holiday season. This is the first episode out of three that we are focusing on keeping our joy throughout the holidays. It is so easy to let the busyness of the holidays and the stress steal our joy. We talk about real expectations in this episode. It's easy to have high expectations or even false expectations for our blended family moving into the holidays. If we can focu...

What if you had a date that had an element of surprise along with simplicity? Heck yea, sign me up! Dating your spouse is so important for your marriage, and your parenting and kids benefit when your marriage is strong. Although it's easy to fall into the same routines of dating and it can become a little boring, if we are being completely honest. It's always fun to add new ways to spice up you an...

It's easy to focus on all the problems we see, and most of us don't take time to reflect on the good we've done. Being able to take time and reflect on some of your wins in your family is very powerful at building encouragement and hope. This is a step we don't always take as parents enough. We can often see it as being modest or not being prideful, but celebrating our victories is always a good r...

Some of us love dancing and all the others secretly want to love dancing. When we were kids we would dance around like we just don't care, but as we get older we start letting the insecurities creep in. What if you could learn how to have fun dancing and make it a date idea with your spouse or even your kids? We talk about ways that you can bring dancing into your house while having fun busting so...

Some quote Edison saying, "I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb." (and I would say he was pretty successful!) It's easy to be hard on ourselves when we mess up parenting, or even to admit that we have messed up in certain areas. But when we can look at our failed parenting moments as learning opportunities and ways we can become better p...

Let's move the movie to the outside and make a date with it. This was another date night idea from our Adventure Challenge book. We scratched it off and it said watch a movie in your backyard. We invited our kids and let them pick out a movie. We then took ideas from the movie to make our dinner and the outside vibe to match the movie we were going to watch, and had a lot of fun hanging out with e...

Small steps lead to big change! It's easy to want to feel like we need to fix all of the things we think are wrong in our family (or could be better) all at once. We might hear a good idea for change, read a book, take a course and feel we have to take action on everything all at once. When we approach it that way, we can set ourselves up to become overwhelmed and fail, then we lose hope because i...

Game nights with your family are so valuable at growing your family relationships closer, if done in a careful way. This will help you create lasting memories that you can all laugh about with each other for years to come. In this episode, we talk about how some games can create targeting, even unintentionally, and can enhance division that may already exist in a blended family. Other games can dr...

One of the biggest issues for a blended family couple is trying to work through your parenting differences. This can cause so many problems in your marriage and is also a leading cause for marriages to fail. We know the struggles all too well. It wasn't until we learned to start working together and get on the same page with parenting, that we saw such positive results in our marriage and our fami...

Do you like a good mystery? We found a product that combines hours of fun while you and your spouse, or the whole family, tries to solve a mystery together. That's right, you become the detective. We received a large envelope that was filled with police reports and statements, evidence, pictures and other clues that you pull out and start going through to figure out who was the one that had the mo...

With Ryleigh Tandy If you missed Part 1, go back and listen! There is some power to this interview for you and your family. This started out as one interview with Ryleigh, but at the end all who listened, wanted more. We had a lot of messages wanting a sequel. So here it is, and it's just as powerful as Part 1. This episode dives into that relationship to help us gain an insight that could provide...

We are talking about taking thrift store shopping to another level. Did you know you can make a fun date out of thrifting with your kids or family? You can also turn it into a fun challenge to spice it up and have a bunch of laughs. It's cheap and very entertaining. Join us in this episode as we uncover some fun ideas that you can use with your family or friends with your local thrift stores. EPIS...